Daft Punk's Electroma Gus Van Sant, Isaac Asimov, and a French-loving raver walk into the desert... Not a joke, but the vibe of Daft Punk's art-house film debut that debuted at Cannes in '06. In what could either be called a long-form music video or a 74-minute silent movie, it's a beautifully-filmed story that touches on some classic human themes, but in a really twisted way starring robots. (It better have been filmed beautifully......

Art Somerville's Nave Gallery has brought us thoughtful installations before, but their new "Ghost Town" sounds positively compelling. Artists imagine our earth in a process of transformation, with cities growing and shrinking, populations moving, people interacting with nature, and everything cycling both naturally and unnaturally toward growth, decay, and chaos. Might sound like a bunch of hippie nonsense, but we think it makes for some appealing art. "Ghost Town" runs through March 21 at......

Jazzy Movies Avant garde filmmaker Robert Fenz and free music composer and multi-instrumentalist Wadada Leo Smith team up tonight at the Harvard Film Archive to "create a 'space' that grows out of the combination of disciplines, with neither sound nor image subjugated." Fenz screens his film Meditations on Revolution and Smith provides live improvisational accompaniment. Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge, 7:00pm. $10. (RS) Rabbits Bored on President's Day? Get in......

Some super-snazzy stuff is going on around Boston this week in the film world. The African Film Festival at the MFA is going strong, and Harvard Film Archive brings us José Luis Guerín's In the City of Sylvia (En la ciudad de Sylvia) with the director live and in person. (Sometimes we wonder what the point of saying "live and in person" is--would we really go to an event with someone dead and in person?......

Great Romances III Friday, Feb 8 -- Thursday, Feb 14, various times Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge More details Somebody at the Brattle Theatre must have a heart made of sap. The cinema is hosting not one, not two, but six days of romantic films leading up to Valentine's Day. You cannot deal with that much loving. We cannot. So, Bostonist has assembled a quick guide to help you choose the ideal screening for......

This weekend's Hollywood blockbuster openings are even more depressing than usual, with an ancient Stallone (looking like "an overcooked Ball Park frank," according to E), a cybercrime flick, and a take on a decade-old SNL skit "leading" the pack. Rambo, Untraceable, and Meet the Spartans (which currently has a negative rating at Rotten Tomatoes, something we haven't seen very often, if ever!) will open this weekend, most likely to some box office clamor despite the......

The 2008 Golden Globe nominees were announced yesterday, and to nobody's surprise, they skewed heavily toward the period drama Atonement. Charlie Wilson's War, No Country for Old Men, American Gangster, and Sweeney Todd all emerged with at least 4 noms each. Local fave Casey Affleck was nominated for his (non-Jesse James) title role in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and though Gone Baby Gone didn't get a nod in the......

Art House Silent Art Auction Thursday, November 29, 7:00 pm Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, $15 More info The Brattle Theatre is holding its fourth-annual silent art auction so you can do some good for local culture and make your apartment less ugly. Bids start at $35, which is pretty cheap for getting your foot in the door as an art collector. The Brattle has previewed some of the works so you can glance at them ahead......

Chris Marstall, the founder of Tourfilter, decided he wasn't satisfied with helping people track their favorite bands. He realized something was missing when it came to local movie schedules. As Boston movie connoisseurs are aware, Greater Boston is always on top of the film scene. The Brattle Theatre, Coolidge Corner Theatre, the Harvard Film Archive, and the Museum of Fine Arts could keep you in a theatre seat every single night with current arthouse hits,......

Zach Braff in Conversation at the Brattle Sunday, October 7, 2007, 2:30 pm Free More info at the Brattle As if their announcement that Wes Anderson and Jason Schwartzman were going to be at the Brattle to discuss The Darjeeling Limited (tickets are gone, alas), the Brattle also dropped the bomb that Zach Braff would be stopping by. The Harvard Lampoon is inviting Braff, actor in Scrubs and semi-emo director of Garden State and The......

Zombie Movie Marathon Somerville Theatre 55 Davis Square Saturday, October 6, 7:00 pm to 7:00 am Sunday $24 in advance/$30 day of show BostonSci-Fi.com, the same folks who brought you the SciFi Film Festival, is offering a little taste, so to speak, of what's to come with night full of brain-starved zombies. Garen Daly, local sci-fi master, has listed a few of the movies of the evening on the Boston Sci-Fi.com website. The Somerville Theatre......

Darjeeling Limited Plus Q&A With Wes Anderson and Jason Schwartzman Brattle Theatre Thursday, October 11 7:00 pm Update: One commenter pointed out that the Brattle website isn't listing it yet and is showing Robert Reich reading at 6:00 pm and the Fantastic Film Festival starting at 10:00. Harvard Book Store, also sponsoring the Reich reading, sent out an e-mail saying the reading has been moved from the Brattle to the Swedenborg Chapel. Update to the......

Swashbuckler will be screening at the Brattle Theatre tonight, Wednesday, September 19, at 9:30 pm. The Brattle Theatre is celebrating Talk Like a Pirate Day, and they've made an interesting choice. Instead of going with the obvious, as in an earlier Pirates of the Caribbean, they went with the 1976 adventure Swashbuckler. The Brattle's release calls Swashbuckler "little-known." No kidding, but James Earl Jones, the master of gravitas (sorry, Stone Phillips), the voice of God,......

The Camp!Camp! series will run the weekend of today, August 10, through Monday, August 13. Check the Brattle Theatre for showtimes. The Brattle Theatre is holding its Camp!Camp! weekend. Bring a whistle, short-shorts, a snorkel, and a sleeping bag so you can do whatever it is kids do at camp. First off is Summercamp!, a documentary about a crew of kids attending Swift Nature Camp in Wisconsin. The filmmakers follow five boys and five girls......

The Long Goodbye, The Lady in the Lake, Murder My Sweet, and Strangers on a Train will screen this weekend at the Brattle. Check the Brattle Theatre website for showtimes. The Chandler festivities start today, Friday, August 3. The Brattle takes their noir fixation to the next level with a whole weekend of movies dedicated to the work of Raymond Chandler. The theater is showcasing a new print of 1973's The Long Goodbye, in which......

Trailer Treats will be tonight, July 19, at the Brattle Theatre. Doors open at 7:00 pm, and tickets are $12. Brattle Trailer Treats Night sounds an awful lot like a night out at the drive-in, except it's indoors. But it's all the outdoor fun you can stand under a roof! The Brattle Theatre will be showing nothing but movie trailers tonight, so you can witness the best, juiciest moments about a bad movie without having......

The series Barbara Stanwyck - Maybe I Am Just a Dame starts at the Brattle Theater today and runs on Tuesdays until August 28. Check the theater's website for showtimes and dates. Ball of Fire is tonight at 7:15 and 9:30. The Brattle Theatre's series on Barbara Stanwyck begins tonight with 1941's Ball of Fire, a title that pretty much sums up Stanwyck's legend. She would have been 100 years old this week, and her......

The Brattle Trailer Smackdown Contest is open until Sunday, July 1. Get details on the rules and regulations from the Brattle Theatre website There is a $10 entry fee. Gee whiz, the Brattle Theater has been pugnacious lately given the recent anime-fest Brattle Royale, and now with its Brattle Trailer Smackdown contest. In this contest, aspiring filmmakers are invited to submit a trailer to the Brattle for a fictional movie. There are only a few......

The Brattle Royale runs at the Brattle Theatre from noon tomorrow, June 2, to noon on Sunday, June 3. Tickets are $25 advance and $35 at the door. We're not kidding. The Brattle has outdone itself with the title and tag for this weekend's 24-hour anime festival. The title is "Brattle Royale," of course, and the tag line is "17 Titles, 24 Hours, 1 Survivor, No Rules!" If you think you can handle an......

The films of Zhang Yimou will screen at the Brattle Theatre from Wednesday, May 30 through Thursday, June 7. Raise the Red Lantern starts the festival tonight and Thursday at 4:45, 7:15, and 9:45. Zhang Yimou might be one of the most consistent directors working today, but one movie immediately comes to mind when considering his body of work - Raise the Red Lantern. The Brattle Theatre scored a new print of his signature movie......

Zombie will screen at 7:30, and Torso will screen at 5:30 and 9:30 on Thursday, May 10, at the Brattle. We'll be spotlighting a few movies from the series, but you can see the full schedule here. The Brattle is kicking off its Grindhouse series in honor of the Quentin Tarantino / Robert Rodriguez movie. They've put together a collection of some freak-flick standards, such as Escape From New York, The Thing, The Hills Have......

The Brattle will kick off the "Hot Fuzztival" today, Friday, March 16. To get a pass to the screening of Hot Fuzz on Sunday, March 25, you'll need to see one of the "fuzztastic" movies picked by the Hot Fuzz filmmakers. It can't be that hard, can it? First of all, not matter how much Hot Fuzz sounds like a porno flick, it's not what you think. The team behind Shaun of the Dead has......

The Schlock-Around-the-Clock festival kicks off on Saturday night at the Brattle at 9:30 pm. Bring your jammies - they're going until the next morning. Tickets are $20 for the all-nighter. The Brattle is hosting its very first Schlock-Around-the-Clock this weekend, and, when it comes to schlock, they've set the bar very, very high. You may never see schlock like this all in one place again. Here's the Brattle's lineup: Shanty Tramp (1967) This movie plays......

The late, great director Robert Altman made some brilliant movies (Nashville, anyone?). He also made some unbelievably crappy ones (Pret-a-Porter). But the Brattle is here to sort the wheat from the chaff and to bring you the best of Robert Altman - at least the '70s Altman, anyway - all week long. Movie buffs, fill out your calendars! Tonight M*A*S*H (1970), 4:30, 7:00 People are so used to Alan Alda as Hawkeye that it's a......

The Brattle is screening Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan at 5:00, 7:30, and 10:00 tonight. It's one of the Brattle's 2007 staff picks, and the choice proves the Brattle's impeccable taste in cult classics. How can you possibly resist this sci-fi treat with the Dream Team of William Shatner and Ricardo Montalban? The Dig expressed its excitement best by simply writing: "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!" (did we get in enough "A"s?) To accompany that sentiment, Bostonist......

The world lost many entertainers this year, but one of the most tragic stories came out of the indie-film world when actress Adrienne Shelly died at the hands of a construction worker with whom she was arguing. The Brattle is screening one of Shelly's collaborations with director Hal Hartley Wednesday, January 3. The Unbelievable Truth, from 1989, follows an unconventional romance. A young woman in Long Island (Shelly) falls for an older ex-con, but......

The Brattle will be screening four of the Marx Brothers classics all day New Year's Day. A Marx Brothers marathon isn't the same as a fistful of painkillers, an ice pack, or a Bloody Mary, but some laughs might make for the best hangover cure of all. (Then again, a Thin Man marathon might be more appropriate.) The Marx Brothers Marathon will appeal to your inner post-party beast by screening Animal Crackers, Duck Soup, Horse......

If you missed Inland Empire because you were too busy, don't worry. The Brattle has given you a little Christmas gift by adding more shows after the original run, which was supposed to end yesterday. Now, the Brattle will run the movie in which David Lynch out-Lynches himself at 1:00 pm next Monday through Friday. This exercise in stream-of-consciousness filmmaking, which sounds like Mulholland Drive times 12 plus Laura Dern plus rabbits, may be the......

Hot on the heels of his feature film debut in Jesus Camp (Bostonist's most enthusiastic movie pick in October), megapreacher Ted Haggard faces allegations of methamphetamine use and indiscretions with a male prostitute. Haggard was (until last night) president of the National Association of Evangelicals and senior pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where you can rent a "prayer closet" for $25 per night and apparently give new meaning to the phrase for......

Need your seasonally-mandated scary-movie fix, but wary of those Grudge 2's and Saw XXVIII's? Bostonist has researched the alternatives, and alternatives to those alternatives. Thursday 10/26 House of Wax The BPL schedule doesn't specify which House of Wax, but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it's not last year's tepid Paris Hilton vehicle. Boston Public Library (South Boston Branch, 646 East Broadway), 6 pm, free For a gentler, lighthearted ghost story,......